Terminal Island

Book excerpt: Terminal Island tells the story of a small island in the Los Angeles harbor and the communities that called it home. “The book offers a rich record of that community and more. As is true of just about everything in Los Angeles, peeling back the layers of a place leads to unexpected discoveries.”—The Los Angeles Times Terminal Island traces the history of a sheltered spot in the Pacific Ocean that once served as a resort for wealthy Southern California's landowners, as a refuge for its artists and writers and scientists, and eventually a community of Japanese families who made the island their own. This community was at the heart of one of Southern California’s most important businesses: the fisheries. World War II devastated the community when the US government removed the entire population of Japanese and Japanese Americans and incarcerated them in camps. Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor tells the story of this small place, the people who lived there, and the huge impact they had on the history of Los Angeles.